Kara DioGuardi: My mom knew about molestation

Laura Willard is a law school grad who has successfully avoided using her education for eight years and counting. She's a wife and an adoptive mom to two kids. Motherhood is the best job she never knew she wanted so much until she had it...

The former American Idol judge was molested at the age of 11 by a family friend's son. She says that her she told her mother about the molestation, but nothing came of it. "My mother was very Catholic, very repressed, a virgin when she married. She barely said the word 'sex' and there weren't Oprahs. It was a different time," DioGuardi told PopEater.

However, DioGuardi knows her mom carried it with her. "[I]n the last month I spoke to my mother's friend's kid and she relayed to me how my mother was speaking to her about it so it definitely weighed on her and I spoke to her about it before she died."

Unfortunately, not only did being molested affect DioGuardi, but the manner in which her mom reacted - or didn't react - impacted her. "She didn't know how to handle it but still you internalize it like, 'Wow, am I not worth anything?'" DioGuardi explained. "So I think that was something I needed to come back from and build my self-esteem."

Kara DioGuardi also discussed being date raped by a music executive and her struggles with an eating disorder that she developed in high school. You can read more about DioGuardi's mom's knowledge of the molestation in DioGuardi's book, A Helluva High Note, which was released on Monday.